Charlottesville High School visits for science-&-art field trip

On November 29, we were lucky to host Charlottesville High School for the first ever CHS-UVA Science-and-Art field trip to the Department of Chemistry!  Twenty-nine students from AP Chemistry, Art I, and Honors Studio Art came to visit for tours of the science labs, presentations from graduate students, and a unique art activity designed by Ms. Rachel McLaughlin, art teacher from CHS.  The art featured surrealist portraits, where faces were recombined on puzzle pieces, to convey the idea of "organ-on-chip":  fabricating organs from molecules and cells and rearranging their pieces in the chemistry lab.

"One thing that I really enjoyed was being able to see the two microscopes in the labs we visited. In each one, we were able to see cells up close and that is something I've never seen. It was a fun and eye-opening experience. Another thing that was really cool was hearing about the organ on a chip because it’s such an amazing idea!" -- A. M., 10th grade

"I'm really interested in both chemistry and art so being able to see how those two intersect was really cool for me. Also being able to see the applications of some of the ideas we talk about in art class being able to be used in medical advancements through chemistry is inspiring." -- S. L., 11th grade

Many thanks to CHS teachers Rachel McLaughlin (art), Rhoda Baker (chemistry), and Sherry Hodges (chemistry) for coming and bringing their students!  Also, the tours and talks would not have been possible without Charles Richardson from Gahlmann lab, Mimi Shin from the Venton lab, Nathan Swami from the Swami lab, and Lauren Russell from the Lampe lab.

We are grateful to the Department of Chemistry for their support of this event.

Ashley's Diffusion paper is in press!

Our latest paper is now available online in Analytica Chimica Acta.  We described the first method to measure diffusion of bioactive proteins in living tissue without an invasive probe, and we used it to measure the diffusion of cytokines through living lymph node tissue.  In the future, these measurements and others made with this tool will be used to make simulations of the immune system more realistic.

Pompano group at MicroTAS

We are proud that Meg Catterton and Sangjo Shim both presented posters to the international audience MicroTAS 2017 in Savannah, Georgia this year.  Their work was well received.  We enjoyed talking with fellow microfluidics researchers from all over the world, and catching up with former Ismaglov lab members!

Sangjo presents his work.

Meg presents her work.

Beautiful Savannah.

View of the conference center from the bridge over the nearby river.

Savannah is a busy harbor!

We saw it up close during the boat cruise.

MicroTAS 2017!

Welcome Aruna and Paola

The Pompano lab is growing.  We welcomed Aruna Sastri and Paola Covarrubias this semester. Aruna is earning her Masters degree in Chemistry this year and plans to work on novel methods to study lymphocytes in action.  Paola is a first-year undergraduate who joins us from Dallas, Texas.  She plans to work on methods to keep lymph node tissue alive in culture -- hopefully for weeks at a time!  Good luck to both of them.

Prof. Pompano speaks at Hartwell Annual Meeting

Dr. Pompano presented our lab's latest work at the annual meeting of The Hartwell Foundation, held at Duke University.  It was great to meet with approximately forty researchers all conducting creative, cutting-edge research to help the children of the United States.  Many thanks to The Hartwell Foundation for such a stimulating meeting.

Dr. Ashley Ross Featured in C&E News

Congratulations to former post-doc Ashley Ross who was featured in C&E news this week!  The article describes her work done in our lab to use a new microfluidic system to measure diffusion of proteins through living tissue.

Click the link below for the full story:

http://acsmeetings.cenmag.org/watching-immune-proteins-and-therapeutics-diffuse-through-lymph-nodes/

We wish Ashley the best of luck at her new appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cinncinatti Ohio!

The Pompano Lab at ACS

After a very productive summer of research the Pompano Lab went to the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington DC.  We presented two posters, one of which was featured at SciMix!

Thanks to everyone at ACS and here is to another productive year!

AAI Capitol Hill Day

Dr. Pompano co-led the Virginia delegation for AAI's Capitol Hill day, a day in which researchers from all over the country traveled to Capitol Hill to visit their Representatives and Senators and advocate for strong, steady support of funding for the National Institutes of Health.  From Virginia, a group of four researchers from academia and a research institute met with the staff of Representatives Garrett and Wittman, and Senators Kaine and Warner.  We thank them all for their agreement about the importance of biomedical research!  We hope to see continued strong support from the House and Senate for the NIH.

Pompano lab at Immunology 2017

In May, The Pompano lab sent a delegation to the American Association of Immunologist's annual conference, Immunology 2017, in Washington DC.  It was great to take in some cutting-edge immunology research!  We presented three posters:

Maura Belanger:  “Validation of murine lymph node slices as a viable and functional experimental platform.”  Co-authors included Ashley, Andrew, and Ben (undergraduate).   **Congratulations to Maura, who won a Student Travel Award for her poster!

Ashley Ross: “Diffusional analysis of cytokines in lymph node tissue on a microfluidic chip.”

Kristen Richey (undergraduate):  "Bright blue fluorescent nanoparticles for live cell imaging by fluorescence microscopy."  This was a collaboration with Meng Zhuang and Cassandra Fraser.

Look for the papers on these topics later this summer!

Pompano crew marched for science!

The science policy decisions and research advances made in the next few years have the potential to impact the quality of life on earth for decades or even centuries to come. Scientific data needs to inform decisions made on everything from addressing the changing climate, to choosing which energy sources to invest in, to regulating pharmaceuticals and genetically modified foods.  Furthermore, scientific research (largely funded by the U.S. government) is needed to solve major societal problems -- for example, by researching how diseases progress and how best to stop them.  We marched to bring attention to all of these issues, and to help fire up the scientific community to promote continued advocacy going forward.

On April 22, 2017, Dr. Pompano and her family marched right here in Charlottesville, while Jenn Ortiz made the trip to Washington, DC to be part of the 40,000 scientists and supporters who participated in the main march.  We were proud to be part of this world-wide event.